Cheney: It is better for US to attack Saddam sooner rather than later

In the strongest terms yet from a senior Bush administration official, Vice-President Dick Cheney warned yesterday that the United States could face devastating consequences if it delayed taking forcible action to oust Saddam Hussein.

Mr Cheney's remarks were a clear bid by the White House to counter criticism from within his own Republican party of the dangers of the US acting unilaterally to remove President Saddam. They came amid word that President Bush's legal advisers had told him he needed no additional Congressional authorisation to launch a military attack on Iraq.

Addressing a veterans' convention in Nashville, the Vice-President responded to the doubters – among them two former Republican Secretaries of State James Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger – by attacking the "deeply flawed" logic of those arguing against a pre-emptive strike to stop the Iraqi leader from developing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

"What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or wilful blindness," he said. "We will not simply look away, hope for the best and leave the matter for some future administration to resolve."

Failure to attack now would only allow Iraq to grow stronger, the Vice-President declared. Forcing President Saddam from power would bring freedom to Iraq, peace to the region, boost Arab moderates, cause extremists to rethink violence and help the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, he claimed.

In the case of President Saddam, who had already used weapons of mass destruction, the risk of inaction was "far greater than the risk of action" he said, setting out for the first time the political, rather than moral, case for a military strike, which Mr Bush himself has conspicuously failed to make thus far.

"The entire world must know that we will take whatever action is necessary to defend our freedom and our security," Mr Cheney added in a riposte to the foreign opponents of a US strike.